ARE WE SO DIFFERENT FROM 15TH CENTURY ISLAM?
This is Islam’s 1426th year. I have already discussed the similarity of behavior of the 15th Century Church and the current fanatical Islam. Not surprisingly large areas of the world dominated by Islam are still primitive compared to the 21st Century.
Here is, however, a reminder of the primitive conditions in the 15th and 16th Century as reflected by sayings still used 500 years later.
“Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children - last of all the babies.
By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it-hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs cats and other small animals, mice, rats, and bugs lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof-hence the saying "It’s raining cats and dogs."
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entryway-hence, a "threshold."
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up-hence the custom of holding a "wake."
England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a” bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell".
